Advertising and marketing strategies and tactics vary widely in form, scope, and costs for businesses. Formulation and implementation of these strategies and tactics attempt to reach the maximum number of targeted customers, and potential customers, for minimal amount of expenses. Without constant reevaluation and control of advertising and marketing strategies, they can lose effectiveness or costs can spiral out of control.
Traditional advertising outlets, such as billboards, printed media (e.g. newspapers, magazines, direct marketing mailers), radio, and television commercials reach broad untargeted audiences, but they suffer from several problems: 1) it is difficult to limit the views of this advertising to specific targeted individuals or groups of individuals; 2) these types of advertisements are costly to produce; 3) these types of advertisements result in overpayment due to a lack of targeting, resulting in a waster of advertising expenditures; and 4) these types of advertisement are difficult to modify quickly to reach an audience that changes in real time.
Newer forms of advertising strategies and tactics on electronic media such as website advertising, mobile device advertising, social media, and e-mail are much less costly to product, easier to limit to targeted individuals or groups of individuals, and can be modified quickly to reach different audiences in real time. However, these types of media do not reach broad audiences, and often fail to reach customers or potential customers at the edge, or outside of a targeted group.
So, the subject invention is a new tool for advertising that is cheaper to produce, easy to modify in real time based on changing audiences, can be tailored to reach specific individuals or groups of individuals, and can reach broad audiences.
The subject invention is an autonomous self-driving vehicle with an advertising platform, such as large video signage, that can be used to display ever-changing advertisements. The audiences of such advertisements would include those individuals that were in proximity to the vehicle as it traversed a geographic area. A large fleet of such vehicles could constantly move between targeted areas, including suburban neighborhoods to reach a maximum audience, without the need of a human operator.